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Saturday, March 18, 2006

LANparty




So today I planed to visit a LAN party near by.
I installed a new Window and the whole crap that is needed to talk about a proper working one. Then I had to change some partitions to have enough space for the games.
The job was actually quite easy: remove hda2 (which was used as a backup partition for my suse configs and homes) and make the unpartitioned space a FAT or NTFS. Sounds easy - wasn't. I removed the partition and tried to make a FAT in Windows - no way - after making the FAT I wasn't able to access it, since explorer always died while fetching some information about the partition (actually one never knows what that thing is doing). Anyway - I booted Kubuntu - removed the FAT and tried again with Partition Magic. Wanna guess what happened? >>Error 701<<
Beside that this told me exactly nothing about what the error actually was it just annoyed me - I was fed-up with that Window crap and rebooted. And then the unbeliveable happened - grub declined to start. <> I thought and searched for the Kubuntu Live CD. I booted it - wanted to mount hda1 to chroot it, but mount declined to mount. So what does a Linux user think if something doesn't work? Well, <>, so I started fck.reiserfs --check /dev/hda1.
And it told me that my partition is totally dead and I might rebuild the whole tree. So I've done. It took me about 2 hours to 'rebuild' and in fact I ended up with an empty partiton which was at least mountable. So after I freaked out because of a "it seems like I lost all my files" thought, I noticed the lost+found dir and checked it. Actually I included my whole system (some parts usable, some others not, some path structures existing, some others not).
As I'm wirting this I put the rebuilt stuff (actually my complete home afaik) over to my other harddisk. So installing a new Window and preparing for a lan party ended-up with an aprox. dataloss of 70-80% and lotz of wasted hours. I love that!

So I'll grab the PC as soon as the moving has finished and install a new Kubuntu at the lan party's place.
Conclusion of this day is that I'll never install a Window again - and therefore will spend even more time with putting Linux and the Free Desktop in general to the same Level as Windows is (talking about driver, games and user counts of course).



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Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Dublin :-/




Akademy 2006 in Dublin - hooray :-D
Actually I'd like to be in Dublin, actually I'm happy for Dublin to be the Akademy location 2006. But the date is just sad, sad, sad for me :-(.

Akademy 2006 starts around 10 days after school starts here. So the possability to be in dublin is somwhere <5%. I'd have to fly over on friday and be back on monday morning (might be more stress than fun :-|)

So this whole blog post is just about my current sadness:
:-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( ... and some more

But there is still that <5% possability, so let me cling to it :-|



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Sunday, March 05, 2006

The Linux Gaming Issue - Progress




So gaming sux, because of faults within the community, the game developers and the graphic card manufacturers. Start with our job I'd say?!

  • Got an Nvidia card? - tell Nvidia to start cooperative efforts on a Kernel API for closed source drivers info@nvidia.com
  • Got an ATI card? - tell ATI to improve their driver and maybe start cooperative effors on a Kernel API for closed source drivers https://support.ati.com/

  • You want to play a native Half-Life? - mail Valve
  • You want to play a native Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo or WoW? - mail Blizzard
  • You want to play a native GTA? - mail Take2Games
  • You want to play a native Far Cry? - mail Crytek (developer)
  • You want to play 5 % of world markets games? - find a contact formular at www.EA.com

By telling them you'd like to see a port of the game XY they might get an idea of how to make money with Linux Gaming.

Last but not least, buy games which are available (and might support your daily enjoyment ;-)). I'll order Northland (really great game, though there are quite less buildings imo) and X² tomorrow.


So Linux Gaming isn't that awesome in a lot of categories, though there is mind to improve this. It might all be better if Linux would get a wider spreading on desktop. So maybe the first aim of all should be promoting the Linux Desktop?
Choose your job, everyone has to do something to get that working.

Linux Gaming isn't Crap it just needs Help!



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Friday, March 03, 2006

The Linux Gaming Issue - Bordeaux?




Since various people meant wine 0.9.x (with DirectX support) is a quite useable replacement for Cedega, I took a look at it.
Note: this review is based on a short term observation made within the last 3 days. The games I tried may work with some tricking, though I haven't had enough time to.

It's actually quite nice to see finally some DirectX work done in wine, but by now the stage seems not to be gammaware. I've tried 9 games and only 1 were at least startable
I used wine 0.9.8 (there are no debian packages for 0.9.9 as I'm writing this) so a quite new version. Actually I expected a bit more functionality :| but as the whole DirectX thing is also quite new this might be a fault.

Anyway, here's the list:
Medal of Honor Allied Assault -> installation = yes -> starting = no
Painkiller -> installation = yes -> starting = no
Cossacks -> installation = yes -> starting = no
Airline Tycoon -> installation = yes -> starting = no
Start Trek Armada II -> installation = yes -> starting = no
Half-Life/Counter Strike 1.6 -> installation = yes -> starting = yes -> bug within the menu
Star Wars Knights of the old Republic -> installation = no (I've read that there is some tricking needed, even then is the game not working properly)
Codename: Panzers Phase One -> installation = no

I don't have to say very much about this result, have I? So wine is not yet Bordeaux - a Cedega conqueror :-P (sounds strange?!).
If you know how I can get one of the games to run, please post a comment, and don't forget to tell your opinion about how to get Linux Gaming improve ;-)

Tomorrow on the gear apachelog: The Linux Gaming Issue - Progress



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Thursday, March 02, 2006

The Linux Gaming Issue - The Hope




The title could also be Patriot 2 since this episode depends on the previous (or the previous on this?! - something might it be ;-))
Anyway, topic is whether there are games which are promising, in future.

So is there any hope of Linux Gaming in areas not including shooters or lame jun games?
I hope so. The port might be an interessting one, and not just because they made an open call for beta testers. X² is a very good game in general, gets monotone after quite some time, but grea fun I think (at least X was). There's also Northland, I haven't tried it yet but the Screenshots aren't that bad IMO.
And I really think it's unlikely that Linux gaming gets even worse, might sound evil but compared with Windows, or even with .mac ..... it's really a shame.

Actually I'd like to see more game developers like Id, porting their games to Linux. First step would be to make games more portable in general, but well, I think we might tell them to do so. The community isn't bugging them enough afaics.
But it's not only game developer's fault, also ATI with it's crappy 3D driver (though I have to admit that Nvidida's is also far away from perfect). And their excuse that there is no API for closed source drivers in the Linux Kernel is a very LAME one, since Linux is OSS and therefore anyone (also ATI/Nvidia) can contriubte to it - I think that Linus won't discard a patch/enhancementt fixing this, without having a very long discussion about it.

So let's think about how to get more game publishers to support Linux till saturday (post a comment), while I'll post the very short review of recent's wine gaming capabilities.

Tomorrow on the geared apachelog: The Linux Gaming Issue - Bordeaux



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Wednesday, March 01, 2006

The Linux Gaming Issue - Patriot




Yesterday I told you some stuff about latest Cedega and my opinion about emulating stuff (a review of latest wine will be add on friday, so the collected version of the issue will be available on Sunday). Today I'll write some facts about native games - this will havey depend on the tomorrow's episode, so you should read both ;-)

We should use native games.
Why should we?
Because they are better performing.
Why do they performe better?
Because they are running on Linux.
Why are they running Linux?
Because you do.

That's actually everything I'd have to say about native Linux games, waving that commercials mostly suck, or aren't that awesome.

So let me differ into 2 categories. The commercial ones and the OSS ones. While the commercial ones have to be sold, so that the company doesn't have to close the doors and go begging, the OSS ones don't have to be sold and therefore they are maybe produced under less pressure (dunno whether this is that way).

The majority of commercial games suck, because they are low-budget productions coded in 2 weeks (including design and story). Why are they available for Linux? Because they have to sell as much as possible to be productive.
Though not all low budget games are bad.
Let's take Darwinia as an example (at least I think) it's a low-budget game, though it's one of the best games I played within the last 12 months. It's (like any low-budget game) available for all 3 major platforms and performs on all 3 quite well (though I've tested only 2). If you search a good game for lonly hours, I can really promise you - Darwinia will give you great entertainment. Drawback: it's short fun (very normal gamer needs about 8 hours for finish it).

There are also commercial high budget games though I probably have to tell you about them.
Quake 4 -> awesome atmosphere + awesome graphics | limping story
Doom 3 -> awesome atmosphere + awesome graphics | limping story
NWN -> awesome story + good graphics | usable but not awesome atmosphere
....

We see they all missing a major part (at least of the major parts I currently thought of). They are great for graphics freaks or for story freaks, but they don't have the right balance of them.


The 2nd group mostly consits of "short fun games" (at least I think they are not playable for hours and hours)
Those are including the games shipped with KDE or GNOME as well as such as GL-117 (which is actually a game you can play for various hours) or planet pinguin racer (which is exactly the opposit).
No doubt that they are fun for 10 or 15 minutes, while downloading amaroK 1.4 beta1 (shameless ad). But most people (and I mean really most so somewhat 99%) can't play them for various hours without becoming insane. Though there are good games which are playable for quite some time e.g. FL117, Battle for Wesnoth, Nethack, Nexzuiz etc.
Though those aren't much more than I've wrote, that's sad but would be no problem if commecial games whould offer a wider range than just shooters.

So where are the problems, that companies aren't porting their games to Linux?
Well, I use to attend to a business school, therefore I'd have no problem to write quite some pages about that.
It's actually all about money, companies wanna make money, that's the point nowadays - making money. Now if you use 3D-Frameworks like OpenGL for your game, it may not run well -> which causes less sales -> which reduces the profit. That's the reason why game developers use to built their software upon DirectX, since the changes that it's faster are quite big -> developed by MS, like the main market's desktop system - can't be a disadvantage.

And as long as they build their software upon the non-portable DirectX there is no change for Linux Gaming. Another problem that companies don't wanna port their games to Linux are the lame drivers - ATI's is famous for the not integrated or not working features and the awesome crashes for various reasons - Nvidia's is better but also not perfect afaik, so why would people buy a game if they can't play it? Again less profit, since porting is expansive. Actually I think the way Unreal Tournaments gets shiped (Windows and Linux version) is a quite good solution, people who are able to play on Linux can use it there, and all others will have to use Windows.

So let's sum up: companies use DirectX because MS pushes it's performance on Windows, graphic card vendors produce sometimes unusable drivers for unknown reasons and cause a unplayable state. Without this disadvantages Linux Gaming could be hell awesome and awesome performing also.

Tomorrow we will check whether everything is lost,
in the geared apachelog: The Linux Gaming Issue - The Hope



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Tuesday, February 28, 2006

The Linux Gaming Issue - Le vin




Within the last episode I gave you an idea what I (currently) think about gaming on Linux. So the next few will actually try to describe why I'm thinking that way.
By the way, it is possible that I'll finish The Issue soonest at Sunday, since I got some special stuff I may grab up (not sure though).

Anyway, let's take a look at Cedega/WineX/Transgaming's wine with licensed stuff and special focus on Linux gaming. The default solution for emulating Windows games to be played on Linux.
My personal opinion is that it might be better to use any Windows (however you got it) and use it for gaming instead of subscribe to Cedega. I don't think that Cedega/wine is bad software, I just don't get the point of emulation (though wine is not an emulator ;-)) with somtimes happening performance loss and restriction to commonly wanted games (which are sometimes not the most enteraining). Though if you doesn't have the possability to get an Windows installed, Cedega/Wine is a really great option.
About the performance issue click here
Short summary:
Cedega is actually having a sometimes evilish performance loss compared with a Win XP and it's even not faster than a native Linux port. So why pay for this? Yeah it's not very comfortable to reboot the machine when you wanna play some cool games. But it's cheaper, and also better performing. Whether it makes sense for you is your own decision.

Usability
In latest Cedega (5) the cedega core (formerly known as winex) and the frontend Point2Play got merged and therefore version 5 got increased usablity (though I think transparency has been lost there).
One deficit I have to tell is the mounting and unmounting of CD's/DVD's. Most current distributions (focused on usability) don't force a user to know what mounting/umounting means or what it does, therefore a lot of very "normal" users might be a bit confused at first, but this actually just a mather of time.
Actually I have to admit that Cedega's usability seems to be quite good (for an emulator ;-))

But this good usability doesn't change the fact that cedega might not be interessting for most people, since I have to aggree with any Windows user who says "Why paying for Cedega when I can get WinXP for a fixed price, or maybe a pirated copy" (yeah even this is an option, though I don't suggest to use it - MS developers are still developers with family and all).
Cedega does a great job in bringing awesome games, which are limited to Windows, to the free OS, although I don't think there's a major reason why one should actually _have to_ emulate a game to get it run on Linux.

So what do I get for my 5 EUR per month?
Cedega
Not being able to play any game with any version
Less performance compared with native version or Windows
A cool GTK (dunno if that is 2 at all) interface
Good usability
And working ALSA support (I also think dmix works with >=5)

Cedega is a really good emulator, though it's not the perfect solution, and actually an even worse solution if you think Linux should be used for everything, everytime, everywhere (like I do). And the better way howto play games on Linux will be reviewed

tomorrow on the geared apachelog: The Linux Gaming Issue - Patriot